Hannibal's Dynasty

by Dexter Hoyos

  via the offshore isle of Cercina to Tyre and then Syria.15

  Had he stayed at Carthage, the envoys were probably under instructions to

  demand he be handed over to them. Their denunciation prompted the Punic

  senate to send two ships after him, which hardly squared with simultaneously

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  declaring him an exile but obeyed the envoys’ implication that he ought to be

  punished for his actions. The demand for his handover not only had been put

  to his fellow-citizens by the Roman war-embassy of 218 but became a staple

  in Roman dealings with those who became his hosts in exile. Surrendered

  leaders were not treated handsomely at Rome. Kings like Syphax and in 168

  the fallen Perseus of Macedon might be put into guarded villas but even then

  did not survive long; other leaders (most famously Masinissa’s grandson

  Jugurtha and the Gallic hero Vercingetorix) perished at Roman executioners’

  hands in the squalid Tullianum prison at the foot of the Capitol. Hannibal

  was wise not to risk it.16

  The denunciations which the envoys supposedly then unleashed against

  him in the Punic senate bear the coarse stamp of annalistic hindsight. As Livy

  tells it, they accused him of stirring up both Antiochus III and the Aetolian

  League in Greece to make war on the Romans, and scheming to bring

  Carthage into the same plot, not to mention planning to involve the entire

  world in war. But although Roman relations with the king had soured by 195,

  at that period the Aetolians were still Roman allies—discontented ones to be

  sure, but they were not to break with the Romans and turn to Antiochus until

  193, nor is it likely that the Roman Senate was blessed so early with the fore-

  sight to know they would.

  What the envoys (in practice Caepio) did claim was probably closer to the

  allegations earlier raised by Hannibal’s enemies: he had been in touch with

  the Seleucid king and was urging him to make war on the Romans, no doubt

  promising to bring in the Carthaginians on his side; the republic would never

  enjoy peace while its hate-filled former leader lived in its midst, free to take

  part in affairs and seek power afresh. It would have been a small step from

  this to demanding his handover, but in his absence the best they could add

  was what Livy reports, that ‘such conduct should not go unpunished if the

  Carthaginians wished to convince the Roman people that none of [his misbe-

  havings] had been done with their approval or with public sanction’.17

  Faced with this unsubtle deposition the Punic senate—even had it been

  composed entirely of Barcid backers, even if both current sufetes were—

  could not counterargue. The Romans were militarily busy only with

  provincial wars in Cisalpina and Spain, and had a powerful navy plus plenty

  of veterans from the recent war with Macedon. Caepio and company had

  turned up officially out of the blue (they certainly had not been invited, nor

  had sent word ahead that they were coming), and everybody knew of at least

  one previous abrupt Roman démarche, the rape of Sardinia: some elderly

  senators had probably lived through it.

  Even so—and even though the demand that Hannibal ‘should not go

  unpunished’ clearly implied that punishment should be at least decreed—the

  senate’s reply took the limited form noted earlier: the Carthaginians would do

  whatever the Romans wished. This move quite possibly forced the envoys to

  declare what they did wish. Only after that were the penalties voted that

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  Nepos credibly reports (Livy mentions no penalties under any date but, as

  just noted, he plainly implies them here). The senate not only ordered ships

  to chase after the runaway ex-general but declared him an exile, seized his

  property and even demolished his house.18

  But no one else was attainted and the Barcid faction remained to fight

  another day. As the crowds’ reaction to his disappearance and then the Aristo

  episode in 193 both show, Hannibal left behind a strong network of friend-

  ships and popular support. His opponents do not seem to have succeeded in

  reimposing the old oligarchic control of affairs through the One Hundred

  and Four, for when some light is next thrown on Punic domestic affairs we

  read of three factions or groups competing politically: pro-Roman, pro-

  Masinissa (the old king was still very much alive) and ‘those who favoured

  popular rule’.

  Typically Appian, the reporter, fails to clarify when this was, and seems in

  fact to be generalizing about the whole postwar era—he names Hanno the

  Great, surely in his eighties by 195 if not dead, as the pro-Roman leader and

  Hamilcar the Samnite, who was active in the later 150s, as one of the two

  democrat chiefs. But it is clearly implied that politics remained a matter of

  competing leaders and groups, even if the leaders were the rich and well-

  born as usual. The citizen assembly continued to play an important part: to

  drive the pro-Masinissa faction-chiefs into exile in 152 Hamilcar the Samnite

  and his confrère Carthalo had to carry a popular vote, which they sought to

  shore up by persuading the citizens into an oath never to contemplate repeal.

  In turn the ‘democratic’ faction’s ascendancy in the following years, leading to

  confrontation first with Masinissa and then with the Romans, was seconded

  by the Mighty Ones, who continued to direct foreign affairs.

  Such consensus probably had not reigned at all times during the preceding

  40 years, of course, but overall it points to a more open and flexible political

  life after 196 compared with before. Moreover it was the ‘democrats’ who in

  the 150s and after spearheaded resistance first to Masinissa and then, disas-

  trously, the Romans. So, whether or not directly descended in political terms

  from Hannibal’s supporters, they look like continuators and adapters of his

  methods and attitudes—and, in dramatic irony, the devisers of a national dis-

  aster that outdid his.19

  VI

  Hannibal’s services to his city as sufete were certainly notable. True, he was

  not the architect of the renewed prosperity: that was due to the energy and

  resourcefulness of all his fellow-citizens, even if he had helped to set an

  example with his olive-plantations. But as suggested earlier, his financial

  reforms seem to have survived and made an impact, he eased the political

  strains that had been building up and he let greater flexibility, openness and

  indeed responsibility into public life. Arguably his achievements in one year

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  of civil office far outdid those of his twenty years of military command—in

  constructive practical effects if not world renown.

  The Romans’ reaction to his reappearance in public affairs in 196 sharply

  contrasts with their indifference five years earlier, even though then he had

  still headed an army whereas now his leadership was civilian. Scipio, uninter-

  ested in hounding Hannibal in 201, was firmly opposed to it in 196 too, but

  his influence—despite his renown and his position as honorary first sena
-

  tor—had plainly declined. The Romans’ intervention vividly illustrates, and

  unflatteringly, their worries at the prospect of conflict with the Great King of

  the East. But it revealed too the growth of a deeply ingrained ill-feeling

  towards the Carthaginians. This could not yet be called hostility (except

  towards Hannibal) but, over the decades and in spite of all their guest-

  friendships and contacts, it would strengthen into implacability.

  This did not have to happen. The Romans’ officious response in 195 to the

  allegations by Hannibal’s enemies—whose self-interest was surely obvious to

  others besides Scipio—recalls their ruthless reaction to Hamilcar’s military

  and political success in 237 which involved no menace to Italy: better to act

  high-handedly at once to snuff out a possible danger than sit quiet and see

  what might come. There is no sign that the Carthaginians harboured anti-

  Roman feelings, let alone schemes, nor that Hannibal had any such designs.

  True, after years of Masinissa’s bullying and Roman lukewarmness, they

  broke the treaty of 201 by waging war against the Numidian without the

  Romans’ (unobtainable) consent. But the king’s provocation was obvious,

  nor had they any wish for a Roman war even then.

  So it could be argued that if the Romans had followed Scipio’s advice and

  left the Carthaginians to solve their own problems, relations between the two

  republics would have found a better footing. The reformed and peaceable

  Punic state would have posed no threat, would have promoted prosperity

  around the Mediterranean, might even have become a loyal ally—and there

  would have been no tragedy of 146. If so the Romans’ vindictiveness in 195

  was unusually shortsighted.20

  This is probably too optimistic, all the same. The Carthaginians and Hanni-

  bal too were submissive because they were militarily powerless. It is a

  different question what might have happened over time, if Hannibal and his

  friends had remained dominant in political life while prosperity developed

  and the Romans entangled themselves in one foreign war after another.

  Masinissa and his ambitions would have been a permanent thorn in Punic

  Africa’s side, and action against him—as actual events were to show—could

  not be ventured without involving, in fact defying, the Romans. Hannibal

  would have made sure that, if it came to defiance, the republic was well

  equipped (its accumulating wealth has already been mentioned). It is not

  unthinkable, either, that a vigorously restored and Barcid-dominated state

  might eventually have looked for ways to reassert itself in foreign affairs

  overall, including allying with other states oppressed by growing Roman

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  supremacy and high-handedness. Indeed in 174 Masinissa was to claim that

  the Carthaginians and Perseus of Macedon had exchanged envoys, though

  what their motives were is unknown (and the Romans for once seem not to

  have taken offence). The decision to interfere at Carthage in 195 probably

  owed something to fear of a Barcid-led return to independence; and however

  ill-grounded the fear was at the time, over the long term it was probably the

  right decision from the viewpoint of the Romans’ own interests.21

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  T H E E N D O F T H E BA RC I D S

  I

  Hannibal never came home. Received by Antiochus III as a friend and coun-

  sellor, he none the less failed to play a notable rôle in the events up to and

  during the Great King’s war with the Romans. Originally he was neglected

  because the king still sought to settle his differences with the Romans by

  diplomacy; then he continued to be overlooked (we are told) owing to his ill-

  timed hobnobbing with Roman envoys at Ephesus in 193. They sought him

  out supposedly with specious hints that he might be able to return to

  Carthage, but in reality to stir suspicions in Antiochus’ mind: a fairly pre-

  dictable ploy that any experienced ex-general should recognize. He may have

  responded so as to sound out what the chances of return were—or to

  remind his host indirectly that he was not to be taken for granted. In either

  case it lacked tact. Even if he regained Antiochus’ confidence by telling him

  of his boyhood oath ‘never to bear goodwill to the Romans’, the Seleucid

  monarch still failed to use him seriously when war did break out.1

  There were other reasons for this. The exile’s frankness would have done

  him no good if the stories told of it are true—like the cutting comment

  when Antiochus, showing off his sumptuously caparisoned military multi-

  tudes, asked complacently if they would be enough for the Romans: ‘enough

  and quite enough for the Romans, however greedy they are’. This is probably

  ben trovato rather than true (a writer’s idea later on of showing how the hero

  forecast débâcle and refused to flatter), unless it was a comment that Hanni-

  bal in fact growled to someone else after the display. More likely to be true is

  his barb at the expense of Phormio, a Peripatetic philosopher at Ephesus,

  whose lifetime lack of military experience did not deter him from lecturing

  for hours on generalship to Hannibal and an otherwise enraptured audi-

  ence—‘I have often seen many old drivellers, but one who drivelled more

  than Phormio I have not seen.’ But Phormio’s admirers probably included,

  even if not Antiochus, some of the royal court since it was Hannibal’s new

  hosts who had invited him along.2

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  He was outspoken, and not entirely to others’ taste again, when occasion-

  ally admitted to the royal council’s strategic planning discussions. In 194 and

  193, when everyone including the king was still wondering whether it might

  come to war with the Romans, he urged pre-emptive action: a small com-

  bined expedition—100 warships, 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, under his own

  command naturally—to be sent to Italy via Africa to try to bring the

  Carthaginians into alliance and, with their aid or without, raise war against the

  Romans in their homeland (Livy later shows he was thinking of Etruria,

  Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul). Meanwhile the main royal forces should move

  into Greece as a first step towards invading Italy in his support. This riskily

  optimistic grand scenario supposedly impressed Antiochus, but that was

  partly because war was far from certain and therefore bold schemes could be

  comfortably touted. In any case, the upshot was that Hannibal sent ahead his

  Tyrian friend Aristo to sound out the Carthaginians: and when that mission

  collapsed so did royal interest, if it had not already faded thanks to Hannibal’s

  meetings with the envoys from Rome.3

  Despite the reported reconciliation between exile and king that followed,

  Hannibal was still not invited to council meetings for several months, so the

  reconciliation was at best on a personal level. Militarily the royal ear preferred

  to listen to Greek advisers, Alexander the Acarnanian and Thoas of Aetolia,

  who suggested only sideshow-jobs for the Carthaginian because plainly they

  res
ented him in any serious rôle. Nor was Antiochus himself too enthusiastic

  about entrusting a serious rôle to a lieutenant who might eclipse him in mili-

  tary prowess.

  If Nepos is right that in 193 Hannibal sailed with five ships to encourage

  his fellow-countrymen to join Antiochus’ war—only to give up when he

  reached the coast of Cyrene, more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometres) from

  Carthage—then this was his first employment by the Seleucid king since he

  had joined the court, but the story is unconvincing. Nepos has Mago the

  Barcid join his brother only to die, and Hannibal gives up because the

  Carthaginians have decreed banishment for Mago in turn; on Aristo’s mis-

  sion in this same year Nepos is silent. Livy more believably reports that the

  idea of sending Hannibal had been discussed but, thanks to Thoas, nothing

  came of it. If the ex-general did ever visit Cyrene, with five ships or just one,

  it would have been en route from Carthage to Tyre in 195, for the coastal trip

  could hardly have avoided Cyrenaica. If he learned of a Punic decree of exile

  then, it was not about his long-dead brother Mago but himself.4

  He was not given another council hearing until midwinter 192–191 when

  the king and his court were at Demetrias in Greece, with hostilities already

  under way. Now he urged a rather different strategy but still with the focus on

  Italy: Philip V of Macedon to be won over or neutralized, half the royal fleet

  to raid the Tyrrhenian coasts and half to bar the Ionian Sea to an enemy

  crossing and make it possible for Antiochus to invade Italy himself at an

  opportune moment. This time he did not (it seems) envisage landing in Italy

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  to stir up preliminary revolts: instead Antiochus was to station all his troops

  in Epirus for an invasion in force. The council applauded his proposals, then

  acted on none of them.5

  II

  Antiochus may have been jealous of his guest’s fame and suspicious of his

  devotion, but there was more to it. Hannibal’s stress that war against the

  Romans needed to be fought primarily in Italy was strategically sound (like

  his stress on how needful support from Macedon was), but for him to urge

  this after his own failure there, and in so limited a form—even though it was